Zedong, Mao

In the meantime, he refocused his attention on the political arena. He had maintained his antibomb activism through the late 1940s even as the cold war deepened and anticommunist fervor created an atmosphere of distrust and political repression in the United States. As Albert Einstein and other scientists had predicted, in late 1949 the Soviet Union developed its own atomic bomb. At the same time, Mao Zedongs rebels triumphed in China, bringing the world s most populous nation under communist control. Then, in the summer of 1950, communist North Korea invaded South Korea, setting off the Korean War, a bloody conflict that cost the lives of thousands of U.S. troops. 

Mao Zedong killed 30 million Chinese, and the Soviet government murdered 20 million of its own people. In the 1970s, the Communist Khmer Rouge killed 1.7 million of their fellow Cambodians. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Saddam Hussein s Baath Party... 

Yang, Changes in Mao Zedong s Attitude toward Indochina, pp. 13—16. 

Robert Sutter, China Watch Toward Sino-American Reconciliation (Baltimore, 1978), pp. 67-75 He Di, The Most Respected Enemy Mao Zedong s Perception of the United States, China Quarterly 137 (March 1994), pp. 145-58. 

Inaugural Address, 2,0 January 1969, PPP RN 1969, p. 3. Mao Zedong read Nixon s speech with interest and marked it for distribution to Party cadres a commentary on it was also published in the People s Daily, thus reaching a wider Chinese audience - Gong Li, Mao Zedong yu Meiguo (Beifing, 1998), pp. 195-6. 

Memcon, 24 February 1972, pp. 6, 8. In its list of guidelines for the talks, the Politburo had included the principle that China would try its best to liberate Taiwan by peaceful means and deal conscientiously with this issue - Gong, Mao Zedong yu Meiguo, p. 253. This was not a dramatic departure from previous policy, for, as noted before, Mao had stated as early as 1963 that China would prefer not to use force against Taiwan. However, private reassurances were probably as far as the Chinese leaders were willing to go, since a public statement would adversely affect the credibility of Chinese claims of sovereignty over Taiwan. 

Huang-Howe memcon, 14 August 1972, Box 850, NSF, NPM, p. 2. On 10 July 1972, Mao himself had warned the French foreign minister about the danger of the Soviet feint towards the East while they speak of attacking China, the reality is that they want to conquer Europe. - Mao Zedong waijiao wenxuan, p. 597. 

Mao Zedong waijiao wenxuan [Selected diplomatic papers of Mao Zedong]. Beijing Zhongyang wenxian, 1994. 

Mao Zedong yu Meiguo [Mao Zedong and America]. Beijing Shijie Zhishi Chubanshe, 1998. 

Changes in Mao Zedong s Attitude toward the Indochina War, 1949-1973. Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. 34. Washington, DC Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, n.d. 

Complex issues need complex solutions, but they generally get simple slogans to encapsulate and make memorable these solutions Relevance , Ask Nature , Science for All , Hands On , Science Workshop , Learning by Doing . Mao Zedong had a genius for inventing them, in a very different context. 

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